Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/212

 honours were added the lord wardenship of the Cinque ports and the captain-generalship of the London Artillery Company (June). A bill exempting the prince from the operation of the clause in the Act of Settlement excluding foreigners from offices passed the lords with great difficulty, but no opposition was offered to the annuity of 100,000l. proposed for the prince, ‘though it was double of what any queen of England ever had in jointure’ (, v. 55–6; cf., pp. 77–8). To hold his office of lord high admiral it was necessary for the prince to ‘conform occasionally’ to the church of England by receiving the sacrament according to its rites; but he deferred to the queen in voting for the Occasional Conformity Bill in 1702, though assuring an opponent of the bill, ‘My heart is vid you.’ When it came up again in 1703, and the queen, to oblige the Duke of Marlborough, slackened her opposition, the prince was allowed to absent himself from the division (, vol. iii.). At the end of the year he took an active part in the reception of the Archduke Charles, titular king of Spain, on his visit to Windsor (, v. 83). But in general he played no part in public affairs. In 1706 he carried a message of encouragement from the queen to Godolphin (, Life of Godolphin, 1888, pp. 288–9), but in 1707 the tory intriguers endeavoured to gain his support by representing to him that the influence of Marlborough and the lord treasurer shut him out from his proper share in the control of affairs (, v. 336). According to an unkind story the queen's secret interviews with Harley first became publicly known through the indiscreet remark of her husband that she had hurt her eyes by sitting up late at night (, p. 267). In June 1708 Godolphin complained of his, as well as the queen's, ill-will (, xiii. 166), and at the beginning of the year the whigs had begun to threaten that if the queen did not retract her promise to appoint certain tory bishops they would, among other things, ‘show up’ the admiralty in such a way that the prince should be obliged to give up his post as high admiral (Lord Raby to Leibniz, 17 Jan., ap., p. 464). The inefficient system of naval administration of which the prince was the figure-head had almost from the first given rise to loud complaints (, v. 90), and an address on the subject had been voted by the House of Lords in 1704, and very sharply answered by the queen (, xi. 33–4; it seems to have been a factious motion). Parliament was to meet on 16 Nov. with the whigs in the majority, and already their demand for the admission of Somers into the cabinet was coupled with renewed menaces against Prince George, who had for some time been suffering very severely from asthma. His obnoxious favourite, Admiral George Churchill, to whom the conduct of the naval administration had been chiefly entrusted, was persuaded by his brother, the Duke of Marlborough, to offer his resignation. But the whigs were determined to transfer the management of the admiralty from the prince to Lord Pembroke, in order that his offices might be given to Somers and Wharton; and in order to screen her suffering husband from a personal attack the queen (22 Oct. 1708) signified to Godolphin her assent to the admission of Somers. Whether the resignation of the prince would have been still insisted on remains uncertain, for on 28 Oct. he died; ‘nature was quite worn out in him, and no art could support him long’ (Godolphin to Marlborough, ap., chap. lxxv.). The queen, who during his illness had shown the most unremitting care to her husband, was inconsolable for his loss, and gave touching proofs of her remembrance of him by her generosity to his servants and dependants (cf. Wentworth Papers, pp. 63–4; Treasury Papers, 1714–19, pp. 270, 373). During his lifetime she had regretted his excessive good-nature to them (, Diary, ii. 315). Steele was gentleman usher to the prince (see, Richard Steele, 1886, pp. 55–6).

Prince George was said, probably with truth, to have neither many friends nor many enemies in England. He was too old for active service after Anne's accession. His incapacity at the head of the admiralty was due to the system which placed him there, at least as much as to himself (see note to, v. 392). He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and seems to have taken an intelligent interest in navigation and in the sciences connected with it. He liberally promoted the publication of Flamsteed's important astronomical work (see Treasury Papers, 1714–19, p. 197). In 1702 he resigned his share of prizes taken during the war to such merchants as should fit out privateers (, v. 179), and it was his intention (and the queen's after his death) to settle the royal house and park at Greenwich upon the Naval Hospital (Treasury Papers, 1714–19, p. 157). Although the Copenhagen professor who devoted a funeral oration to him (ib. 1708, pp. 14, 115) may not have found his achievements a fertile theme, he seems to have been too freely caricatured. In Macky's ‘Characters’ it is said of him that ‘he is very fat, loves news, his bottle, and the queen,’ but he is there further described as ‘a prince of a